Oh the irony. The Home Office intends to introduce tough new controls on immigration after Brexit. The tone could not be more aggressive. It is provoking fury and retaliation from the EU states whose goodwill we need for a successful deal.
The implication is that we have to be out of Europe to control immigration. That’s not accurate. Successive governments have simply failed to use many of the ways in which we could have limited immigration under EU law. If only they had been more thoughtful and careful about this, and had put in half the restrictions they now plan, we might never have provoked the anger that led to Brexit.
Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, is withering about this. “Europe can’t understand